Measurement for Quality Improvement - Health Quality Ontario

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Week
Daily Time (Hours)
10
8
6
4
2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Week
Week
A run chart can be used to display any measure over time and is very
easy to develop, requiring not much more than a pencil and paper. Its
simplicity makes the run chart a powerful tool and one of the most useful for
understanding and communicating variation. Here are some of the reasons to
depict your measures on a run chart:
1. Run charts can help you understand baseline performance and identify
opportunities for improvement
2. They can help you determine if a change is an improvement
3. Once you have made an improvement, you can use the run chart to
determine if you are sustaining the gains you have made
4. A run chart can be used to look at any type of measure over time. For
example: costs, LOS (length of stay), counts, and percentages.
>
Scenario Four – An initial
improvement is observed after the
change is made, but in the last
three weeks the process seems
to have returned to its pre-change
cycle time. The results may be due
to a Hawthorne effect, whereby
an initial improvement is observed
due to particular attention to the
measures, but later, when focus
on the change decreases, the
cycle time reverts to the original
process levels. The changes
have not resulted in sustainable
improvement. So the question here
is, given just two numbers, can
you be sure that the process that
produced the second number is
not the same as the process that
produced the first number?
Run Charts to Engage Leadership and Staff
Run charts can also be a powerful tool for engaging leadership and staff.
Without a clear picture of the actual outcomes, it is difficult to create a real
desire for change or action around an issue. Quite often, staff are shocked
when they are shown the performance of the organization over time and in
a way that tells a story, which in turn can generate support for change. Also,
it is difficult for leadership to create the business case for investing time and
resources in an initiative without first understanding what the current system
performance is and perhaps sharing this with a board or management team.
Utilizing run charts to tell the quality story gets everyone on the same page
and clears the path for the improvement to begin.
Measurement for Quality Improvment| Health Quality Ontario 13